


Eidolon

by Claus_Lucas



Category: Mother 3
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Gore, Hallucinations, Inferiority Complex, Psychological Horror, Tanetane Island, Trauma, like a lot of gore and body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 16:13:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8216332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claus_Lucas/pseuds/Claus_Lucas
Summary: Eidolon1. an idealized person or thing.2. a specter or phantom.
Lucas always sees Claus as a child, constellations of freckles across his cheeks and flowers in his hair. And the skin melting off of his bones.
There simply is no love that can rival the love for the idolized dead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i have to stick the whole lyrics here sorry
> 
> [stolen children](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG90BRy6-5Y)
> 
> were that i the one that died in place of you  
> rather then prematurely paralyzed by you  
> would you have worn your grief like laurels bestowed upon you  
> this useless gravity still felt by all but you
> 
> you know that i wouldn't mind  
> i must have lied a thousand times  
> and how i wanted to die  
> just to sanctify my strife  
> and as that i'm being honest  
> this is all that i wanted  
> most of the time
> 
> could i offer up the years i spent resenting you  
> for the nine years of my life that went to lay with you  
> on the ground above you i'd lie  
> so solemnly contrite  
> and i can finally forgive you,  
> for everytime you saved my life  
> we may have both came unwanted  
> but you were all that she wanted   
> most of the time
> 
> through all the years i casually exploited you  
> and still it never occured to me i was approaching you  
> or that the last six years of my life were overtaking you   
> with an indifference divine  
> my life down i will lie  
> you were only a kid then  
> just one of god's stolen children  
> blessed with less time

A branch of almond and artemisia flowers bound by a halo of hawthorn. A bundle of emerald leaves, pink buds, and yellow petals.

Lucas surveys the bouquet as it’s been placed upon the grave, an offering to his mother’s spirit and a message for her child. Each element possesses a unique meaning.

Patience. Absence. Hope.

Filling the gaps between the words with threads acquired through experience, they reveal an unsurprising statement.

Gone again today. Out looking for him. I’ll find him. Just wait.

The whirlpools of air succeeds in tugging free a twig’s worth of blossoms, scattering the fragments of mixed color and shape across their channels of wind. Their huddled formation bursts upon collision with Lucas’s face, showering the silhouette of his head. A petal caresses his shoulder, delivers nut-flavored kisses that convey what’s been written on its thin, fragile veins. Another, this time from the artemisia batch, lands on his neck before gliding to the depression created by his collarbone. It sits, humming into the breeze a noise and rhythm that’s strung with the calm, confident beat of a heart that’s lost too much to believe more could still be in peril.

Lucas can watch the flowers all day and wonder if the songs they recite are real or imaginary, the result of his own tendency to burrow into every discovery, seek a concealed letter amidst its pages; but living organisms are sincere, they carry secrets on their cheeks that they slip into his hands when they greet him, a pleasant hello, or how are you?, or even have you eaten yet today, Lucas?. They extract from their surroundings the palpable feelings of their neighbors, both the organic progenitors and the inanimate objects where emotions are deposited. When he basks in their presence, touched by their thoughts, the network of knowledge unravels like wrapping paper on a present. Thus even if his father is unfamiliar with the vocabulary of flowers, Lucas can read between the stems and bulbs to find the meaning that was assigned to them through association with the man Lucas chases every morning in vain hope of catching up before he’s vanished into the wilderness.

Hope is one of the figures today, the embroidery in the tapestry of things Flint wants to pass onto Lucas but never has the time to except through these indirect road. Hope is important to Flint – _hope_ is what he has nurtured for three years of existing in a state of unchanging mentality while the collective conscious of the village has been altered beyond recognition; _hope_ is what he has collected, exhausted, recycled, produced from the rivers of energy that fuel his everyday excursions into the mountains to search for a dead person and new flowers to place on the altar; with _hope_ , he preaches, anything can be accomplished; for _hope_ no task is too daunting, no pain overwhelming. Hope does not pause for other things: it goes on focusing on its own affairs, selfish and self-centered.

Lucas hopes to see his father while Flint hopes to wake up before his son has stirred so Lucas doesn’t have the chance to ask him where he’s going, when he expects to return, if he’ll at least have breakfast with him first, if he should take care of the sheep again today since his father will clearly be _absent_ until late into the night; because they both know Flint will not answer, he couldn’t muster the effort to give his son a decent response, and would instead tip his hat and shake his head at any and all question, then leave the house.

Hope, contrary to what Flint has told these flowers, what he’s surely told his wife, his other son (the better one, the one worth having), his best friend, and all of Tazmily, is what, in Lucas’s opinion, Flint needs less of.

And patience, that’s a joke, too: there’s nothing to wait for. Not Flint. Not Claus.

Nobody hopes for Claus’s return as much as Lucas, though. Nobody aches more for his presence, not even his heartbroken father.

Lucas should follow his own advice.

He’s paid his daily visit to his mother’s remains so he should be moving on. Lingering leads to pondering, which soon sours his thoughts. He tries to keep himself from crying in places where others might see him: it’s embarrassing for him and uncomfortable for them.

Lifting his body from its crouching position, Lucas stands and turns. The slope leading to the Sunset Cemetery extends underneath him, adorned with a layer of lush, healthy grass and two fields of sunflowers growing on each side. Lucas treads on the greenery as he descends the inclined passage.

Near the end, where the transition to burial grounds is marked by gray clay covering the earth, there are walls of stone that narrow the path, and in them holes created by crumbling rock. One of them, low enough to touch the floor, opens its mouth wide enough to accommodate a small child.

Lucas’s eyes are captured by a flicker of sunlight reflecting on the jagged surface. Distorted by waves of intense heat like a desert mirage, the crevice is lit with a circle of fire. It burns as a hoop, then shrinks into a crown, thrusting its tongues of flames far enough to singe his skin. The embers transpire somewhere deeper as well –the sensation of blood reaching its boiling point.

Lucas receives the vision of an insect several feet longer than average, elongated in size but with a skinny torso and even leaner limbs. Nostrils expanded, they serve as miniature incinerators, breathing fire into the air. Its jaws snap shut, tongue wedged amidst lime teeth, and it’s engulfed in its own cinders.

A ten year old child is sitting in the niche. His arms form a ribbon around his legs, hands clasped as the bow that holds it together. Curiosity and opportunity glistens in his black pupils, the russet wraths embracing them betraying the guiltless malice of a youngster that has yet to develop an understanding of right and wrong. Spread like drops of dirty rainwater, copper freckles inhabit his cheeks. His eyebrows are arched, orange bridges employed to transport emotions over the turbulent waters of human interaction. His head harvests a garden of thick locks that like vines climbing an invisible fence have swarmed in whatever direction they can grip, swayed stubbornly to the west when he faces south and to the east when he faces north; the hair is almost maroon where shadows overlap, bright as tangerines where the sunlight delivers its rays.

Undoing the knot of fingers, he stands from the ground, revealing that he is the exact stature as the hole. The freed hands retreat behind his back. His sleeves camouflage against the rest of his striped shirt (Lucas thinks of flowers here: violets, daffodils, bluebells, hibiscus; a meadow of interchanging blue and yellow blossoms). As if he were a timid boy meeting a stranger, he emanates an aura of nervousness and excitement.

His height, which offers an inkling of his age, tells Lucas that what he’s seeing isn’t Claus. Claus would be thirteen if he were alive, likely as tall as him (they are twins after all). The child’s appearance is based on his memories of his brother, stored for years with the clarity that extreme trauma brings. Even bliss cannot preserve an experience as faithfully as shock.

The hidden message which Lucas seeks in every event, expects in each encounter, is sliced into pieces and organized as a trail, inviting him to follow. Curved like the foundation of a bowl or an inverted frown (happiness is only ever a gesture away from sadness), the child’s mouth beckons with an eagerness that conceals certainty –a person that pretends to beg for sympathy when they’re sure they’ve already won it.

Lucas is struck by the façade of his hallucination. It seems blameless, innocent –ignorant of its devastating effect on him, so unlike the malevolent entities that often spawn from the same nothingness to torment him. Lucas thinks: this child is like Claus; he’s not a monster or a demon. And he’d be right, were he to leave it alone –children are easily encouraged to do things they shouldn’t.

Seeing is believing, but the heart sets on what it can feel, what it _grasps_. So Lucas touches the child. His fingers trace the left side of his face, starting with the chin, then the cheek, rising to the ear, arriving at the temple. The profile resembles the impression in his bed where Claus once slept. Though Lucas’s has been distorted by the passage of time, similarities can still be found between them, shapes that evidence their status as twins.

Meanwhile the child observes. Patience, hope. Lucas reaches his hair, lacing his fingers through the soft locks. A modest attempt at combing him. Before he knows it, his heart has set on what’s been moved into its grasp.

Then the child bares his teeth. A full set of pearly whites, as Hinawa would call them. They construct an immaculate grin, and a flawless trap.

The smirk of a victor.

The principles of damage are three: movement, mass, and brute strength. Any object can become a weapon. The word ‘weapon’ is a noun but just as quickly an adjective. When something lacks a convenient size or shape, it can be compensated with how it’s manipulated. And when the actions are unrefined, there’s the sheer force that’s applied to it. That’s how the dull blades of kitchen knives can still pierce through skin, or, say, the teeth of a child tear flesh from a hand.

Lucas, naturally, screams. He hasn’t entirely processed what’s happening but his response to being bitten is instinctive. The child’s ferocity is also second nature.

The muscles in his jaws are tough. There’s nothing to restrain him, either physically or emotionally, so they can press with their complete power. He immediately scrapes the summit. Layers of forming skin, fat, and flesh smear like mutilated mash potatoes. Sliced blood vessels bathe the entire mess in scarlet.

The child has grabbed Lucas’s wrist with both hands. Tiny fingerprints are tattooed into his arm, a collection of unique patterns that they’ve always shared. Dentures carry their own landscape as well, and now his is leaving sixteen imprints of it, eight from the upper row, the rest from the bottom. Lucas’s palm has coarser skin from performing manual labor so the top receives deeper gashes. The child tugs, either intentionally or otherwise, and they expand into gruesome lines.

The serenity they shared has collapsed. Lucas’s face swims in a puddle of consternation and repulsion. The child is visibly distressed, but it’s difficult to assess: fury? Loathing? Apprehension? Wickedness? It’s as if there were a pent up tempest. A torrent of negative emotions that has spilled at the first sight of a potential outlet. There’s no regard for how it’ll influence the other party involved. Spontaneous, erratic, violent. A toddler that acts before thinking, before understanding, dictated by a conscious that disregards social etiquette and possible consequences: anything beyond the moment is meaningless, unimaginable.

Alarm induces tremors in his body that shake his vocal cords, but though the exclamations of agony and fright overflow there is no sound after the initial outburst –his throat is too dry: the noise cannot make it out.

The horrifying tricks that his mind plays on him. Nasty, spiteful, cruel. They appear merciful but then change their minds. Never satisfied, they pursue him in with their relentless schemes, new and improved over their previous attempts at startling him. The uncertainty Lucas felt, the possibility that, maybe, nothing can remain harmless in his subconscious for long, has been affirmed once again.

As if his heartbreak wasn’t enough, as if the anguish he’s experienced without the aid of his psychosis hasn’t already harmed him more than he deserves. But perhaps that’s the answer his hallucinations give him: it’s _not_ enough; it’s _not_ more than he deserves. The eyes of the child, like the weeping of a haunting ghost, seem to say to him: you’re alive, your mother and brother aren’t; for as long as you live, you’ll suffer for all three.

Lucas stumbles. Teeth firmly rooted, the child continues to pull, and as he falls Lucas accidentally delivers the necessary double jerk to split his limb. His bones perceive no point in resisting when pressured by more strain than they were built to endure. A snapping sound rivets, proceeded by a crunch.

The child falls back into the niche. Safe in the crib that first produced him, he vanishes with the trophy that he stole from his brother. Lucas feels the absence of his hand without filters, through the vividness of a passing dream that suddenly gains lucidity.

It’s momentary, a shock so expertly performed that he’s convinced of its authenticity (and even if he wasn’t, he’d still have to deal with the _feeling_ of it). The magic trick is only exposed once his fingers interlace, confirming each other’s presence. The phantom pains continue, however.

Lucas wants to think: it’s over. I survived. I’m intact. Instead he thinks: it can only go downhill from here.

Claus returns. He’s older now, bigger. His defining features persist but some of them have become more prominent, developed beyond the rest. Age has turned an equal copy into the improved version. Lucas but better: smarter, stronger, kinder, fearless, fun. The list of talents never dwindles. Lucas has tried but he starts crying when he runs out of space to fit every word. Claus is whom he that could stand beside him and people would say: “You’re identical!” while secretly thinking: “but Claus clearly got it better.” Claus got lucky. He has something that can’t quite be defined but that has obviously set him above his brother, somehow, in some mysterious way.

At birth, perhaps, their qualities were evenly matched: virtues and defects, skills and struggles were equally administrated. But fate had it change, tipped the scale in Claus’s direction. It favored the brave; it favored because fate chooses favorites amongst its children.

The emptiness in Lucas’s heart is no coincidence. Fate knows that some people will always hinder each other’s growth, even if they are not directly harmful. Having them both constantly interfering, competing, _compensating_ , would’ve been a shame. Wasted potential. One had to be removed so the other could prosper. Even if it hurt. Even if it broke their hearts. Fate wants strong children.

Lucas knows what happens next. He can hear it, hear it in this very instant, in the voice of every Tazmily villager, parents included: wouldn’t it be a shame for somebody like Claus to be _dragged down_ by his weak, coddled brother. To unravel Claus’s promising existence, Lucas had to go; it couldn’t be the other way around.

But then Claus died, so, in the end, it’s a shame anyway.

Claus extends his hand, palm upright. Lucas caters to his youthful gaze –such valor, such energy, such a desire for boundless adventure–, manipulated like a seashell in an eddy. Washed away by the current, he can only scramble to match Claus’s pace, however he may set it.

When he speaks, Lucas doesn’t dare breathe.

“Say, Lucas. Whatcha up to? It looks so fun! Let me join you!”

He does not sound like Lucas. He has a child’s voice still, as if only his body had changed, as if he hadn’t really aged at all. But it’s his voice no doubt, it’s _Claus_ ’s voice –as Lucas recalls it. And he speaks through a grin, which makes him all the more pleasant, all the more… _convincing_.

Claus is beautiful, but he’s outside the standard description of beauty. He was once Lucas’s brother, but now his role has transformed to that of a hero, an idol –the star you aim for while hoping to absorb some of its dust.

Hope.

To elaborate: what is Claus if not a symbol? A placeholder for everything Lucas can attribute to the perfect entity. A romantic’s adoration of the perfectly ordinary. What a pity it is that a boy once named Claus has ceased to exist; he lives in neither body nor memory, for the memory of him can no longer be called his. He has been denied logic, credibility, a plausible persona. A pedestal that he could never climb up to. After all, could Claus _really_ be, as Lucas believes, the epiphany of greatness? Of course not. He’s a fantasy. Lucas’s fairytale. Behind the curtain of smoldering fog, Lucas knows that it isn’t Claus. Claus was a human being, with as many faults as there were teeth in the mouth of the dragosaurus he fought. So why? Why fabricate this painful, degrading charade? Because it’s necessary. It’s necessary for Lucas to cope with everything else. How else can he explain the neglect of his father, the dissonance from his friends (“Sorry I don’t have time to play today” meaning “You remind me too much of Claus and I can’t deal with the guilt.”), the endless comparisons to his brother, the dreams of his mother coming for Claus and not him, the inferiority complex?

So he exists, the exaggerated version of Claus, beaming like the end of the world couldn’t wipe the smile from his face.

And Lucas believes he _is_ Claus. When has he been contradicted? Has the actual Claus returned to debunk this invented character? Has Flint announced that he’d like to give up searching for Claus and start taking care of Lucas? Has anyone –ever– told Lucas that maybe what happened to Claus is entirely his own fault; that _maybe_ if he’d been more like _Lucas_ he’d still be at home with his family?

No. Never.

Lucas stands, turns, and faces his brother. He relays a negative response, head emulating refusal. He’s thrilled to see Claus but it’s always double-edged. He won’t agree to any more antics.

Claus treads closer. His smile is stoic but his eyebrows furrow. Concern, confusion worms its way into them. The result of being denied something that you already own. Claus owns some of Lucas.

He pesters: “You won’t let me join you? Why not? Why not? Why won’t you let me join you?”

Before he can decide whether to resist or yield, pain materializes in his throat; hot, sticky, sickening pain. The aching surges from nails cutting into his neck. Legs dangling from his shoulders, chin rested on his head, the child assails.

Let me join you, Lucas

He wants to go back. Mother’s grave has betrayed him. This path is cursed. Too many foul memories were woven into the earth, too many tears absorbed by the plants. The village is a cage but at least it keeps him safe from the outside. There is nothing for him in there, but solitude is better than bad company. The lesser of two evils and all that.

You can’t go there, Lucas

They hate you

noʎ llᴉʞ oʇ ʎɹʇ p,ʎǝɥʇ

ɯǝɥʇ ɟo ʇuoɹɟ uᴉ ʇɥƃᴉɹ pǝllᴉʞ ǝq noʎ ɥɔʇɐʍ p,ʎǝɥʇ

The small hands are occupied again. Everyone’s waiting for you They suck the air out of his lungs, blocking his breathing duct from acquiring new oxygen. Lucas’s stomach convulses in response, oozing panic in doses of pain, warnings for the head, which unfortunately can only make matters worse.

The child’s jaws close around his ear.

A voice Everyone’s waiting booms in his ears.

Lucas stares, mortified. Claus stares back, as blank as a sheet of white paper, as calm as the surface of a still ocean. Lucas’s heart hasn’t received oxygen in over thirty seconds. to throw rocks on you He should be losing consciousness, but instead he’s gaining it, becoming more alive, more aware; every sense –sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch– has flared. He dissociates, numb, for days on end, and then this happens and suddenly he can feel _too much_.

Claus’s hand spit on you is still extended.

Other things awaken from the gloom of his subconscious. Lucas remembers nearly drowning when he first tried to swim, the water soaking his clothes, weighing him down as he floundered while Hinawa screamed in terror, Claus nowhere to be seen after pushing him into the river; he remembers going to bed alone, telling himself every night that this is the last, dad will find Claus tomorrow and we’ll rest together again; and make your life hell he remembers catching Claus’s cold, sharing it like every other illness that one of them got, because they were always so close it inevitably spread between them; he remembers a storm, being alone at home, and thinking: this is it, I can’t take it anymore, I don’t care if mother won’t want me, if Claus will hate me, but to no avail, because the lightning simply wouldn’t take his life.

Who’s “everyone”…?

The child releases Lucas’s throat and covers his face. Lucas feels his own blood. It’s warm.

Lucas takes Claus’s hand.

Claus exclaims: “Yes! Okay, then I’ll be at the very end! Thanks!”

The child disappears again.

Everyone you love

Claus has a gash on his palm from raking the drago fang across it. He clasps Lucas’s hand tightly. Their DNA doesn’t mix. It’s already identical.

It’s a promise then, brother

Lucas returns to his mother’s memorial. Claus follows. A single stream of footsteps is heard as they walk in perfect synchronicity.

Upon the slab of stone marking her grave the flowers offered by his father have been replaced by a flourishing nursery. Seeds nestled in the surrounding ground have sprouted into all sort of plant life. Creepers scale the smooth rock in a desperate, clinging clinch, some armed with thorns and poisonous leaves. Florets fill the crannies shaped like letters while larger flowers form a tiara across the top. Young saplings, barely a finger’s length high, have huddled close to the monument’s sides as if they sought in it protection from the threats of Mother Nature. Berries and nuts protrude from many of the branches encircling it, their colors shimmering like the surface of metal.

Sitting in the nest of plants is the ten year old Claus, an entity as free as the shrubbery to do what he pleases regardless of the moral standing of others. They seem to be trying to build a cradle around his body, or perhaps a coffin.

The child hugs himself, reenacting the pose from when Lucas found him in the pit as faithfully as possible with the components he’s now missing: an arm, a leg, and an eye. But he performs obliviously of such injuries, his fingers buried into the dirty fabric of his shorts with blood still caked under the nails. His right shoulder is singed with the scars of teeth, unattended flesh that’s been left to pour as much blood as it likes; perhaps the sprigs will gain a scarlet pigment from feasting on it. His pelvis is obscured by the shadow of his arm but a mass of mutilated tissue can still be glimpsed. Across his face there are several scratches, thick, long gashes that congregate with a swarm of violet bruises. Slicing his socket, an especially big slash has ruined the soft substance that once interpreted waves of light, rendering the organ useless but not unrecognizable.

Lucas wonders how close this interpretation of Claus’s fate is to reality. Usually he pictures him losing things that come in pairs: eyes, limbs, ears, lungs, breasts. Which in turn is a subconscious expression of his own feelings: he lost Claus, his twin, his other half, his corresponding _pair_.

The child is passive, his gaze fixed on Lucas but nothing else. Thus far he keeps his destructive hands to himself. Lucas can’t be the one to ruin that steady correspondence of looks, frightened that if he as little as glances away the child will be released from his spell and lunge for him again.

Claus, the older one, interrupts the moment by narrowing the space between them. He is still with Lucas, joining him on his strange, unwanted adventure. First he presses his body to Lucas’s back, then grasps his stomach with outstretched arms. His hands create the bow, tying himself to Lucas. Claus’s chin settles on his shoulder.

“Lucas, I have an idea,” He says, smooth like the outside of a pearl. He’s sweltering. “A very, very good idea.”

The heat sears him. It’s uncomfortably high. Lucas squirms, but he’s been seized by Claus’s embrace. As he continues to speak, the volume of his voice gradually quiets, as if he wanted to make sure that the last of it could only be heard by his left ear. Indeed he can’t even hear it in his right.

“Let’s switch places. Let’s switch places. Lucas. Lucas. Let’s switch places. You’re more… You’re more…”

What he’s more is perhaps a deliberate mystery. It’s lost in the murmur, in the pain of being scorched, in how distracted he is still by the presence of the child on the gravestone.

Lucas never knows what Claus wants to say, if there ever was a conclusion to his statement, but he hears someone else. A woman, dressed in white and rose, hovers beyond the ledge, her clothing swaying as if it were below water.

“Your mommy’s waiting for you,” She says.

Lucas turns to her and loses sight of the child. His absence blows wind on the fire. He expects to be jumped on any second. But Claus attacks him first, orange flames overlapping his body. A human torch, lit beside him, sharing embers that make his skin char. The reek of boiling tissue, soon peeling, bleeding. Claus is still muttering, his voice recovering from its decline into silence to eventually become a shout.

“Let’s switch places, let’s switch places, let’s switch places; Lucas, Lucas, let’s switch places; Lucas, Lucas, Lucas, Lucas, Lucas, Lucas–”

It drones on and on, lapping like the fire, consuming something that Lucas foolishly gave these monsters a taste of. Now they are starving for the rest of it and he’s easy to steal from. What’s more: he will willingly surrender it if it means escaping their clutches.

“She’s waiting for you,” The woman begins again.

Melting, he’s melting, like the wax of a candle. The layers of his anatomy roll down in fat drops of organic gelatin. The color of his skin and hair and eyes and mouth become dots on a mass of merging tonalities. It feels exactly like the burning, but now he has the sensation of slowly disintegrating, losing his form, the illusion of integrity –like the atoms that conform his body, in reality tiny specks of matter in a vast galaxy of nothingness.

Claus is doing it. He is inhibiting this development. As if he were speaking the lyrics to a chant, repeating them again and again to engulf his body in a furnace that harms those around him. But he’s spilled into a pool of his name, saying only Lucas, Lucas, Lucas, Lucas. It can only be a calling, a summoning, that carries his desire to transform Lucas somehow.

“With fresh-made omelet,” She finishes.

He is made of clay, so he is easily pierced by a shaft of wood that’s shoved into his abdomen. His melting body drips onto the stick, oozing onto the fingertips of the child, who has returned to stab him. He holds the weapon in his left hand, the one that wasn’t lost in the belly of a dragosaurus. He stares at Lucas with absolute apathy.

“Lucas, Lucas, Lucas, Lucas Lucas Lucas–”

The hole expands. It throws his skin and flesh sideways, crunching the rubber bones amidst them. His organs, sweating into puddles of goop, are exposed: a churning stomach, a heart skipping in pirouettes, two expanded lungs. His intestines, without walls to contain them, spill onto the ground.

“She’s waiting.”

The child is no longer present. He’s left the stick to be digested into the rest of his body. He recognizes it. It’s Lucas’s stick. Claus must’ve brought it so he can die with it.

“Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas Lucas–”

Lightning splits the sky. A bolt descends upon the gravestone. There’s a scream.

SHE’S The woman dissolves into a disembodied mouth and eye. Black and white, white and black, the face grins at him with more teeth than he can trust. WAITING Laughter rings like the crossroad bell, lined with amusement and malice. FOR The eye knows Lucas’s pain, his humiliation, his melancholy. It’s the source of its scorn. YOU!

Half of his vision has collapsed, but he can distinguish the ribbons of red cloth that materialize in the wind. They unfurl like an unclenching fist, connecting through threads. Together they form the fabric of a dress, from which legs and arms emerge. The face grows a head and mahogany locks that flow to the body’s waist.

Lucas’s mother floats before him.

But he is rotting, decomposing, and cannot imagine living for long enough to discover whether it is truly his mother or the eerie smile’s mock imitation of her. Strings of giggles perturbed from the woman’s throat, but there are no words, at least none that he can hear over the shouting of his brother.

“LUCAS LUCAS LUCAS LUCAS.”

He would cry if he could.

“LET’S SWITCH PLACES.”

He would cry until he drowns. At least then he’d die alone.

“LET’S SWITCH PLACES.”

The child sitting on the gravestone.

“YOU’RE MORE…”

Young Claus smiles.

YOU’RE MORE

YOU’RE MORE

YOU’RE MORE

LUCAS

LET’S SWITCH PLACES

YOU’RE MORE…

i need your body to live, lucas

let’s switch places, lucas

sɐɔnl 'ʎpoq ɹnoʎ ǝɯ ǝʌᴉƃ

Lucas jumps. The mouth of the precipice looms beneath his feet. Gravity pulls him into it. He jumps out of desperation, out of fear, out of sorrow; he jumps to reach his mother (she’s waiting), to escape the child (he will hurt Lucas again), to create the corpse that Claus’s spirit can claim (he wants to switch places).

Lucas jumps. His feet leave the ground. The tombstone glows behind him. The flowers whither into dead weeds. He sees the forest, the plateau, the mountains, and a vast, unreachable sky –the islands in an oyster.

A bark rivets through the illusion, tugging it loose like claws burrowing into a carcass. The grass and sunflowers become a grove of pink trees. He’s suspended in a beach, about to stumble into the swirling waters of a storming ocean. But a pair of jaws grip his shirt and pull him back onto the sand.

Lucas sees Boney. His best friend has saved his life again.

I’ll be at the very end

The Masked Man approaches on a crimson carpet. A programmed march: wide steps, always the same length; immobile arms; lifted chin; no expression. The glass eye outside of its mask locks with Lucas’s but it does not hold his gaze, merely stares straight ahead, past him, to the needle swelling from the hill.

Rays of golden light protrude from the ancient artifact, casting a divine blanket around the silhouette of the boy blocking its path.

Commander stops. Black boots align perfectly. The space between each leg can be split in equal halves. Absolute symmetry, minus the mechanical alterations that give each extension of its flesh a unique terrain.

Lucas watches, trying to figure out if it’s out of marvel or terror. Either way he’s captivated.

Boney’s lips curl, front teeth exposed. He glowers with aggression, prepared to spring the moment it moves again. Kumatora’s uncertain, attempting to weigh her abilities against the Commander’s unfamiliar arsenal (which remains a mystery despite their multiple encounters). She betrays none of her doubt, however, emanating confidence and strength, fiercely refusing to reveal weakness. Duster observes in the same intrigued manner as Lucas, though it’s his instinct as a thief to draw all the information possible from a situation before acting upon it.

Commander slides its left foot forward. A fighter’s stance emerges: feet grounded, body balanced, attention forward. To attack or to defend, it has every strategy in its database ready to be executed in a millisecond. In case they’re foolish enough to strike first; in case they require a higher voltage to be subdued.

Lucas follows its trajectory, committing the smallest twitch to memory. Meanwhile the throbbing in the back of his head is steadily increasing. It’s dotted with a patchwork of bruises (gray azure and purpura) that would naturally appear after being slapped nine times with a large paper fan. His companions only required three to four hits to blow the cloud of toxins from their eyes (in the case of Boney, there was one, but he was never affected by the drug to begin with), but Lucas’s was an especially storm vision. Even now that the world has resumed its normal appearance, an occasional distortion evades the filters, though whether it’s an aftermath of the mushrooms or his own psychosis acting up is impossible to gauge.

At the very least, the chemicals that induced the hallucinatory trip have kicked up a few mold spores from the crevices of his subconscious, sure to grow into something that’ll terrorize him eventually.

Lucas

Kumatora raises her firsts. A threat, or a bluff, but surely one she’s eager to fulfill. Commander perceives this change in her attitude but doesn’t concern itself with it. Whether she’s willing to fight or not is irrelevant. It’s like recognizing that a chair is green, but that’s it.

Commander’s hand touches the belt strapped to its waist. There’s a scabbard with a yellow hilt on its right side.

Before the Masked Man can reach it, Lucas intervenes. His legs are released from a paralyzing bind and he runs at instant full speed. He aims for Commander’s arms, which he captures in two five finger grips, right beneath its shoulders.

The force of his hold shakes Commander. It isn’t visibly disturbed but its posture suffers disruption. Lucas has pulled its arm back the side of its abdomen, away from the sword that it was about to remove. There’s something else that changes, too: it looks at Lucas, actually _at him_.

The surrounding pigmasks freeze. They have no intention of getting involved in any sort of combat, a possibility that has just now occurred to them. They’re a party of escorts, skilled at performing tasks that pose no danger to themselves (except from their frequent arguments), but they don’t have the mentality that real fighting demands –especially not when they were promised that Commander is more than capable of dealing with anything that might arise.

Lucas isn’t the person Boney was expecting to make the first move, so he’s also unsure how to proceed. Tension braces Duster and Kumatora. They’re faced with the age old question: attack now, risking immediate damage to Lucas, or wait?

The Masked Man is unlikely to wait for somebody else’s initiative before acting. It was a second away from _something_ wen Lucas interrupted. The elusive ‘something’ generates chills in all of them.

But maybe Lucas has a plan? Why would he grab it like that if he didn’t have a good reason for it?

There is an explanation, but it’s ambiguous at best and incomprehensible at worst, at least for everyone that isn’t Lucas. Lucas has an inkling that he’s just committed a grave mistake, but it’s already done. He’s acted on impulse. There’s nowhere to head but forward.

Lucas

The Masked Man is an individual shrouded in mystery. There’s always been questions surrounding it. Everyone’s pondered at some point.

“That masked man, do you think…?”

“Could he be…?”

“Is he actually…”

While wonder is plentiful, one person’s guess is as good as another’s. Nobody really knows, not with infallible certainty.

Except for Lucas. Lucas is ahead of them in that sense. He has too many advantages. He deciphered all the clues long before anyone started noticing them. He’s never had Commander’s identity wrong.

Suspicion settled since their first, brief encounter as Lucas clung to Kumatora’s boot and a silent masked youth looked down at him. Clarity –enlightenment– twirled its painful barbs into his heart when the metaphysical representation of his lifelong trauma attempted to communicate the truth to him. Proves he’s always known, but it took some monsters to make him accept it.

I’m Claus

Beneath its helmet, this must be close to what it looks like, virtually unchanged from its young years, perhaps entirely so. But is its face that of a teenager or a child? That of the Claus Lucas sees, untainted by injuries, on its road to the unrealistic perfection that he always dreamed Claus would become? Or that of the kid beside him, retaining the marks of innocence and infancy: plump cheeks, baby teeth, supernova eyes (frozen eternally in the moment when they shone the brightest: right before exploding into dark matter)? Did they make Claus taller with those robotic implants (their stature is the same)? Did they twist the fragile frame of his brother so it’d be beyond recognition?

Claus

But Lucas knows it’s him. It. Them. The adolescent boy that glows as if the extinction of the sun could not thwart his grin, and the child in a niche that waits for his family to find him, confusing friends for strangers, lashing out in anger because everything threatens to bring him more sorrow.

Lucas witnessed a glimpse of the Masked Man when it descended from the violet sky, but the instant it touched the ground it was devoured by the delusion. From his palms blood seeps into Claus’s shirt. The child and Claus watch. They’ve come to claim their half of the deal.

It’s a promise then, brother

The Masked Man snarls. Its prosthetic arm breaks free of his grip, then swings back like a boomerang. The weight of the cannon slams into Lucas’s stomach.

Let me join you

Lucas takes internal damage, but he doesn’t feel the blood rising from his throat into his mouth. Instead he’s aware of Claus arm passing through his chest, as if he were made of candlewax again. He’s never experienced such intense pain, but his mind has a rich, almost poetic imagination. The feeling of dying without the blessing of sleep.

Let’s switch places

Claus has his heart. Such a symbolic organ. Same one that was stabbed when his mother died. Several blood vessels are pulled out with it. Slippery shuttles of bodily fluids, oozing their liquids onto Claus’s extremity.

Lucas has not let go. He wants to speak, but the agony silences him. An excruciating mess that eclipses his linguistics. He’s unaware that what’s actually smothering his speech is the blood dripping from his mouth. He manages to deliver a few words.

As he speaks, Claus’s voice overlaps, occasionally blending into a single statement.

“Claus. I knew it. You’re. Alive. After all this time. You’re still–”

Lucas! We finally meet again!

“Alive. My brother. My brother, Claus. Claus. _Claus_.”

It’s me, Claus

“It’s me, Claus. Lucas. Claus, I’ve missed you so much…”

Touch my heart

“Brother–”

The Masked Man punches Lucas again. Its throat spins a growl. His friends have been seared into submission. They don’t dare budge. They see Lucas’s blood. They hear him mutter.

“Claus. My brother. I found you. Now we can go home. At last. Oh, Claus. Claus. Brother, I love yo–”

Touch my heart, Lucas

Commander grabs Lucas’s face. He does not register the change, but his words are cut short. He can no longer speak through the pressing of its fingers. Commander pulls him closer. Their mouths nearly touch.

His hand is on Claus’s breast.

See how it beats in and out?

For a moment Lucas believes he can feel a pulse. He’s ecstatic. But then he realizes there isn’t one.

Claus doesn’t have a heartbeat.

See how it beats

¿ʇno puɐ uᴉ

Reality has been applying layers of watercolor onto Lucas’s face since he was born. He’s an ever-darkening canvas, struck by the shades of horror again and again. Any trace of elation evaporates.

I’m the Claus you can’t see, Lucas

uᴉɐƃɐ ǝǝs ɹǝʌǝu ll,noʎ snɐlɔ ǝɥʇ ɯ,ᴉ

The child speaks for the first time. He sounds exactly like the older Claus. Nothing like Commander, who counts with the linguistic development of a toddler mixed with a wild animal. (Lucas was wrong. They’re really nothing alike, the three of them.)

“Have you seen me anywhere? Where could I have gone? You hid me, didn’t you?”

The Masked Man strikes Lucas with lightning.

Lucas!

There’s noooothing to worry about now

Touch my heart

Let’s switch places

I’ll be at the very end

I’m the Claus you can’t see

You’re more…

The shock knocks him out cold. WhileLucas has a bad dream.

A dream in which he’s eight and crying because Claus is pretending to not know who he is. Lucas cries on and on without pause, for hours, until Claus finally says: “Fine, we’re brothers again, but you have to stop crying, okay?” Lucas immediately stops and nods. But when he wakes up, he’s still crying. Must be because Claus is pretending to not know him again.


End file.
